While media executives orchestrate mega-merger deals this winter, media workers are facing a maelstrom of job cuts and anti-union hostility, with old patterns of inequity surfacing in a wave of corporate consolidation and technological disruption. Those two faces of corporate media were in the spotlight earlier this month, when red-clad members of the New York NewsGuild stood passing out…
Source
It’s becoming something of a theme: Two massive companies are fighting to take over another massive company, in a deal that will enrich a variety of shareholders but leave the rest of us worse off. The news that Netflix struck a bid to take over movie powerhouse Warner Bros. earlier this month likely horrified entertainment workers: Two Goliaths of the industry combining is no good for pay…
Source
Consistent with the United States’ continued slide into an economy powered almost entirely by LLM slop, financialization, and ever-pervasive exploitative gambling, “prediction market app” Kalshi “entered into an official partnership” with CNN this week to bring their “data to CNN’s journalism across its television, digital and social channels.” Soon, CNN will run live odds on world events where…
Source
On November 3, Condé Nast announced that it was folding Teen Vogue into Vogue, thus laying off most of Teen Vogue’s staff. Most devastatingly, the layoffs primarily affected their Black, brown, trans and queer workers and the publication’s entire political desk, which had provided readers with rigorous and accurate reporting on systems of oppression, the policies they took shape as…
Source
Condé Nast is being accused of engaging in “extreme” union busting and illegal conduct after the media giant fired four union leaders and suspended five others last week, shortly after they confronted management about recent mass layoffs at Teen Vogue. Last Wednesday, a group of over a dozen editorial staff confronted the company’s head of HR seeking answers about two rounds of mass layoffs…
Source